About this Course

Successful projects are built on the foundation of a clearly defined business need and well-understood requirements. This course provides students a clear understanding of all the facets of the business analysis role, including a thorough walkthrough of the various domain/knowledge areas that comprise the business analysis profession. Students are provided an opportunity to try their hand at several business analysis techniques to assist with improving their skills in stakeholder identification, scope definition, and analyzing, documenting, and modeling requirements.

This course is compliant with IIBA’s Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK® Guide) version 3 standard in business analysis and is aligned with and upholds the practices as discussed in PMI’s Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide.

Audience Profile

This course is intended for intermediate to advanced Business Analysts who are looking to improve their skills for eliciting, analyzing, documenting, validating, and communicating requirements.

At Course Completion

Upon completing this course, students will be able to:

• Obtain a thorough understanding of the core responsibilities of the business analyst
• Understand the main professional associations and standards supporting business analysts in the industry
• Discuss and explore the components of each of the domains/knowledge areas that comprise the work of business analysis
• Recognize the importance of properly defining the business need prior to engaging in requirements activities
• Formulate a strong understanding of the concepts that comprise strategy analysis
• Obtain experience with identifying and analyzing stakeholders
• Decipher between project and product scope and successfully use models to communicate scope
• Thoroughly understand and identify the various requirements categories and be able to recognize requirements of various types
• Explore business rules analysis
• Understand the benefits of process modeling and the common modeling language of BPMN
• Discuss process models and how the techniques can capture details about the as-is/to-be environment
• Learn how to properly prepare and conduct interviews
• Explore the components of use cases
• Learn what it means to package requirements
• Obtain hands-on experience with a number of business analysis techniques and gain hands-on experience eliciting, defining, and writing requirements.

Prerequisites

No prerequisites - This course is suitable for both beginner and intermediate Business Analysts who want to increase their skills for writing and managing effective requirements on their projects.

Course Outline

Section 1: Introduction to Business Analysis

• What is business analysis
• Benefits and challenges of business analysis
• Project success factors

Section 2: A Closer Look at the Business Analyst Role

• Definition of a business analyst
• Responsibilities of a business analyst
• Importance of communication/collaboration
• BA role vs. PM role
• Project roles involved in requirements
• IIBA/PMI and the goals of a professional association
• Purpose for having a BA standard
• IIBA’s BABOK® Guide and PMI’s Practice Guide in Business Analysis
• Business analysis beyond project work
• Business analysis core concepts
• Business analysis perspectives
• IIBA and PMI certifications for business analysts
• Workshop: Choose Your Project

Section 3: Supporting the Project Portfolio (Enterprise Analysis)

• Define Strategy Analysis
• When to perform Strategy Analysis
• Components of Strategy Analysis
• Defining the business need
• Envisioning the Product and Project
• Defining business requirements
• The importance of stakeholders
• Stakeholder identification
• Tips for analyzing stakeholders
• Techniques for managing stakeholder lists
• Discussion: Who is involved in strategy analysis?
• Workshops:
  • Define the Business Need
  • Write Business Requirements
  • Identify Stakeholders

Section 4: Understanding and Defining Solution Scope

• Defining solution scope
• Techniques for defining solution scope
• Applying the brainstorming technique
• Project scope vs. Product scope
• Finding solution boundaries
• The Context Diagram
• Actors and key information
• Workshop: Draw a Context Diagram

Section 5: Understanding Requirements

• What is a requirement?
• Requirement types
• Business, Stakeholder, Solution, and Transition requirements
• Assumptions and constraints
• Business rules
• Taxonomy of business rules
• Decision tables
• How to write simple calculations
• Requirements vs. business rules
• Document requirements
• Workshop – Document Requirements

Section 6: Elicitation and Process Modeling

• Why do we model processes?
• What is Business Process Management?
• Using a modeling notation
• “As Is” vs. “To Be” modeling
• Why use BPMN?
• Basic BPM notation
• Business Process Modeling – A case study
• Business Process Realignment
• “As Is” vs. “To Be” activity diagrams
• Workshop: Create a Business Process Model

Section 7: Planning and Eliciting Requirements

• Interviewing – what and why?
• Preparing for an effective interview
• Types of questions to ask
• Sequencing questions
• Active listening techniques
• Planning for elicitation
• Conducting the interview
• Establishing rapport
• Active Listening
• Feedback techniques
• Types of elicitation techniques
• Workshops:
  • Planning for Elicitation
  • Conducting an Elicitation Session

Section 8: Use Case and User Story Analysis

• What is an Actor?
• Types of Actors
• How to “find” Use Cases?
• Diagramming Use Cases
• Tips on naming Use Cases
• Explaining scenarios
• The use case template
• Components of a use case
• Scenario examples
• Best practices for writing Use Cases
• Scenarios and flows
• Alternate and exception flows
• Exercises:
  • Drawing a Use Case Diagram
  • Writing the Main Success Scenario
  • Writing Alternate and Exception Scenarios

Section 9: Analyzing and Documenting Requirements

• Requirements and Use Cases
• Non-Functional requirements
• User Interface Requirements
• UI Data Table
• Reporting requirements
• Data requirements
• Data accessibility requirements
• Characteristics of good requirements
• The business requirements document (BRD)
• BRD vs. Functional Requirements Specification
• Preparing the requirements package
• Requirements traceability
• Workshops:
  • Develop a User Interface
  • Analyzing Requirements
  • Tracing requirements

Section 10: Additional Information

• Useful books and links on writing effective requirements